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This Grandma Had No Idea She Was Meeting Her Granddaughter for the First Time

In what might be one of the cutest viral videos to cap off the year, a secret adoption reveal for one unsuspecting grandma is sweeping the Internet.

The adorable video was released just a few days before Christmas, and already has more than 5 million views. Watch the short but sweet clip, and you’ll quickly see why.

In the one-minute video, an Air Force couple stationed at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam in Honolulu came home with not one, but two big announcements. The first announcement was obvious: Donny Goeb and his wife Miranda surprised his mother by coming home early for Christmas. But the second announcement was totally out of left field: Eva Goeb was going to be a grandmother to a newly adopted baby girl, Lily, born Melissa Faith and adopted on December 8, 2015.

While Grandma Eva had known about her son and daughter-in-law’s plans to adopt, the couple kept Lily’s potential adoption — and the $30,000 in adoption costs they incurred that motivated them to make a Go Fund Me page — a secret. Donny and Miranda explained on their Go Fund Me page that they didn’t want to cause any pain to their families if the adoption fell through, so they waited until Lily was officially placed with them before they shared the good news. As we see in the heartwarming YouTube video, Grandma Eva is beside herself when she meets her new granddaughter for the first time.

Donny and Miranda shared on their Go Fund Me page that they began to explore adoption back in October and posted their plans to Facebook. The wife of one of Donny’s old Air Force friends responded to the post and gave the couple a possible lead. After contacting the birth mother, the Goebs were chosen to be Lily’s parents in November and worked to successfully complete her adoption by December 8, across state lines and with the help of an adoption agency and an outside adoption loan. The Goebs said of the anticipation of the big adoption surprise, “Lily is blessed to know how much she was loved before she was known.”

While most of us are used to seeing absolutely adorable pregnancy and birth announcements on Facebook, “out-of-the-box” announcements like this are a little harder to find. That’s what’s so special about the Goebs’ surprise adoption — it’s a moment we don’t see often enough.

This year, we’ve only seen a few adoption announcements make headlines. In early 2015, a couples’ adoption announcement went viral before there were any adopted children in the picture. Cara and Eric Taylor reinvented the traditional pregnancy announcement by posing with six pairs of shoes as they planned to open their family to children from the foster care system. In October, another set of adoptive parents surprised a grandmother by waiting to introduce her to her new grandbaby face-to-face. Other parents who have not adopted have still used the endearing element of grandparent surprise — a couple’s early pregnancy announcement went viral when they used the “Whisper Game” to hilariously tell their parents the news last month.

If the Goebs’ unconventional announcement is any indication, we can expect some big upgrades to the traditional pregnancy announcement in the year to come. Adoption is becoming increasingly common in same-sex marriages and as couples wait longer to have kids, and grandparents are more involved than ever. There’s no such thing as a “typical” American family that looks the same as all the others, and today’s pregnancy announcements are finally beginning to reflect that.

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Content provided on this site is for entertainment or informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical or health, safety, legal or financial advice. Click here for additional information.